Monster Hunter: The Prelude
by Quel33
Summary: The story of an average herder with spunk, carried away by hidden forces to take part in a battle that would engulf the world... His only companion, his trusty and quirky great baggi mount.
1. Herdsmanship & Zombies

Every story usually has a hero who is tasked with saving something, or someone; and every story usually has the forces of good vs evil. This story isn't one of those...

~The Prelude, Chapter One: Herdsmanship & Zombies~

Hello all, my name is Quel. Not my birth name, but my chosen name. I can't remember my life before age twelve, so I've no idea who I am, or where I came from. This story starts like all others: somewhere, sometime. Well let's stop procrastinating, and get to it.

"Quelly boy!? Where are yew?" said the voice of my nightmares.

"Mmmpphhh!" said I.

"Thar yew are laddy!" said the voice.

It was then that I felt a sudden tugging, and found myself being pulled out of the waste bin I had been "investigating". Hanging upside down, I had been grabbed by my right ankle and was now looking up at the face of my rescuer.

"Hiding agin?" said the Head Baker of Castle McCully, Mrs. Renee Derminster. Mrs. Derminster was the wife of Mr. Derminster the Head Marshall of His Lordship's Stables, and both were wyverians in their second century, which was young by their standards, and huge by ours. Now you see why she's able to hold me up so easily...

"No! I, errr, thought I saw some malachite at the bottom, and then I got, err, stuck!"

"U-huh. And I suppose a shakalaka named Gaspardh shoved you in deeper?"

"Not at all... Why are we acting like I'm a kid again...?"

"Because you are avoidin' yer duties as the head shepherd of our Lord's livestock."

"I was only sparring with Gondel in the training yard, and lost track of the time."

"Your test to become a junior guardsmen will have to wait, there's been rumors of a predator bein' spotted in the Veil."

"Ah... That's a different matter."

"Aye, it is. Yew need to ge' on yer gear and go investigae' it."

I was twenty-two, almost six feet tall, I weighed almost one-hundred and fifty pounds of solid muscle, I had blue eyes, brown hair, light skin, and I was still naive by most peoples standards. This was Castle McCully, and I was the head shepherd for the Lord of the Castle, Jason McCully. I had no other shepherds to assist me, so "head shepherd" was just a title. I was all alone... My responsibilities extended all over his Lordship's lands, from the far western coasts of the Black Crags of Dunmire, to the eastern edge of the Veil, the biggest forest in this part of the continent, which was largely unexplored, to the south, where the Lordships' duchy bordered his neighbor, and rival, Lady Heran's land, and finally to the north, where it bordered the vast wasteland known simply as the Frontier. Now this may sound like a huge swath of land, but in actually it only covered about two-hundred miles of land. No I wasn't the only herder in all of the McCully lands, but I was the only one stationed at Castle McCully. The country I was in was known as Evomere, and Lord McCully was head of the northernmost duchy in Evomere. Another thing to mention before I forget to mention the big details, and just mention the little details... Castle McCully was surrounded by a big wall, and around the wall was a moat, and around the moat spread the large town of Castle Town. Unoriginal, but it fit. Outside of Castle Town there were solitary houses, and farmsteads spaced on every hilltop.

Now I'm going to take the next paragraph to tell you all the woes of my job as a shepherd of livestock. Being a shepherd isn't easy, and it isn't tough... As long as you know what to do... What do I mean by that? Well you have to have the tools of the trade for starters. Certain monsters listen to certain things, and abhor certain sounds and smells. For instance to be a good herdsman, you need a herdsman's specially crafted herding stick, a flute, a horn, a pair of climbing gloves, a strong pair of lungs, and a limitless sense of terror. Every herdsman had his own trusty mount, and one of the first tests to be a monster herder was to capture your own mount. I had captured a mount that was a little bit.. different from the usual herdsman's mount. I had my own great baggi, who I named Crash. No I didn't name him that because he crashes into things... I named him that because he crashes _me_ into things... Now back to the present...

Walking back to my hut, I found Crash eating something that crunched entirely too much for comfort's sake.

"We have a job to do Crash. Are you ready to go out hunting something vile, dangerous, and mysterious?"

"Grarrh..." replied Crash warily.

"No you won't have to go near Old Man Derrik's guard dogs."

"Groo..." replied Crash happily.

Saddling up Crash, I gathered my flute, herdsman stick, and a carving knife. Remember that other herdsmen gear I told you about? Too expensive for me to own. I also was smart enough to pack a small lunch of some dried bread, kelbi bacon, and kelbi milk. The ride out from Castle McCully was a beautiful one, with the Veil on the far right horizon, and the heights of the Highlands to the west. It was early in the morning, so a mist still clung to the Veil, and the sun was just now rising over the horizon, making the forest look both awesome, and spooky. I was heading into that awesome, and spooky forest. After riding over many a hilltop, and waving at some folk I knew, I arrived at the proper edge of Lord McCully's territory: the edge of the Veil. After riding across the small expanse of untiled land at the edge of the forest, I found myself in another world. Where the farmlands of Lord McCully had been bright, and windy, the Veil's edge was dark, and quiet. Animals large and small made noise in the underbrush, and birds flew in the trees, crying alarms at my presence.. or was it Crash that disturbed them so? He just snorted at the smaller animals, an stared with a keen predator intelligence at the bigger animal noises. It took us about ten minutes of travel along the small animal trail we were on to reach our objective: a small pen in which we sometimes kept kelbi, or aptonoth. The pen was in ruins. Only one post still stood, and the rest was pieces of wood scattered across the clearing. Scorch marks dotted the scenery to, and of the small herd of kelbi I had placed in the pen the day before there was no sign.

Getting off of Crash, I checked the scorch marks. Hopefully they were just a kut-ku's doing. If they were of something larger than a bird wyvern, then I was in trouble... Another aspect of being a herdsmen was the ability to be a tracker as well. Not being able to read much from a simple scorch mark, I began to investigate the rest of the clearing. Crash just stood there, looking at me and the surrounding forest. The broken pen yielded no results, as nothing had left any defining markings around it. I found no tracks, or claw marks. Nothing in the way of anything told me what caused this... The fact that there was no sign of a mutilated kelbi also clued me in to what must have done this: poachers. Poachers. There isn't a word more hated, or vile as that one word to any herdsman. Occasionally a herder is killed by a poacher, but we give no quarter to them in return. Fights between poachers and herders have gotten so bloody in the past that at one time the old King of Evomere, Keillor the Wise, put a 100,000z bounty on anyone caught poaching. in fact the war between poachers and herdsman once had a famous battle. The Battle of Glover's Holdfast. Not entirely a famous battle, for it was actually fought by ten herdsman, and thirty drunken mercenaries... But it is still remembered by us herdsman... Sometimes... Though admittedly the Bard of Gloverdale does a bad job of singing the lines of "herders murder their burghers" and "mercy mercenaries, for Percy!" Yes, I was most likely dealing with poachers right now... After checking the entire clearing, and finding nothing, I began to check the perimeter of the clearing. After completing my check on nearly half of the clearing's edge, I found what I was looking for: signs of something having left the clearing. From the looks of the tracks ten men at least had passed this way, wearing boots. They had walked single file into the depths of the supposedly unexplored Veil.

"Well this is interesting..."

"Grooowaaarr..." said Crash, also apparently interested.

I was about to whistle for Crash to come over, then thought better of it as my instincts told me I wasn't alone. Crash stopped his grumblings, and bird watching, and fixated his gaze directly to his right... which was six feet, or so to my right. The bushes didn't tremble with movement, the forest animals didn't stop their singing, and the sky didn't darken; but I felt _something_ looking at me. I raced back to Crash, jumping on him just as the brush behind me erupted with movement, and a giant beast emerged silent as death, to rush at me and Crash. We had barely gotten into a gallop, when it was almost on us. I suddenly wished I had some other kind of weapon than a knife. I had no time to look over my shoulder at it like a buffoon, so I hunched down and urged Crash to go faster. Naturally being smarter than his curious master, Crash increased his speed, and was able to widen the gap between us and the beast by a large margin.

We emerged from the forest ten feet in front of the beast, and as it emerged behind us I dared to look over my shoulder. What I saw made me take in an involuntary breath. What was chasing us was something out of a nightmare, it was a demon. The decayed corpse of a monster chased us, but it was impossible to see just what type of monster, for it had a thick black cloud surrounding its body, with only the eyes being visible on account of the fact that they glowed red! It didn't have any trouble being silent, and if it wasn't for the fact that everything it touched rotted and died you probably wouldn't see it until it saw you. So there I was, running-well "riding" for my life, with a giant undead monstrosity of monstrosities following me with clearly violent intent. I had to somehow outrun it back to the castle, but considering that Crash wasn't used to long distance racing, and the beast would probably be tireless, I was in deep $#%&. I was having a splendid day...


	2. A Lesson in Outrunning a Zombie

~The Prelude, Chapter Two: A Lesson in Outrunning a Zombie ~

Hello again. Back for more retelling of my life's road? Then sit tight! The road's a bumpy one at times...

The horror chased me with uncanny intelligence. Every time I tried to lose it by having my more agile mount jump over a small chasm, or race up a hill, and then race down in a random direction, it always managed to seek out my true intentions and ambush me. Twice I almost didn't detect it in time and it got close enough for me to be able to smell it up close. In a word it reeked. It smelled like dead things, rotten things, but above all else it smelled like a corrupt heart. I don't know if you can understand me when I say something smelled like that, but that's the best way I can describe it... Crash and I had barely gone a mile from the Veil, when he started to tire. It wouldn't be long now until he was too exhausted to run, and then we'd be easy targets for that monster. This was a type of situation that was new to me, but would happen all my life: being in a situation with no hope in sight, death looming all around me, and only my instincts and brains to use to save myself. Fear for myself hasn't usually impaired my judgement, but fear for one's I love usually always makes me go into a near panicked state. Not that I loved Crash that much, I was just stricken by terror for the first time in my life. Now, I'll stop my monologue and return to the story... Crash and I had only gotten halfway back to the castle, when disaster struck. Disaster loves to strike at inopportune times... Crash and I had just come down a steep slope to reach the bottom of a dried riverbed. Large stones dotted the ground, and Crash was beginning to get wobbly. The horror was nowhere to be seen, and had disappeared about five minutes ago as we headed towards the riverbed. I had the distinct suspicion that it was heading us off, but I couldn't go back the way I had come, and I was almost to a place I knew would give Crash and me a safe hiding place from the beast. We were just coming out the other side of the riverbed when we heard a groaning sound, and I saw a dead tree falling-wait, dead tree? It was then that I had one of my instantaneous moments of cognition. The horror had somehow circled around me, and had pushed the tree, trying to blockade my path. I was lucky that I had come this way enough times to know that that tree hadn't been dead when I had last seen it, scarcely a week ago. The tree fell, and it was large enough that it blocked off the exit very neatly. Then the horror leaped down from the top of the steep hill that the tree had been standing on. Thankfully I had realized it would do this scant seconds before, and had already turned Crash around to run away. The beast arrived to find me quickly retreating. It was still deathly silent, and the only noise I had heard it make the entire time I had been around it was the impact from it landing in the riverbed.

By now Crash was on his last legs, and was barely conscious. I decided to try something desperate, so I threw my lunch at the horror's face, smacking its head with a piece of kelbi bacon. Surprisingly it slowed down from that... I threw the bread next, and it hit the horror square in the middle of its forehead, which I could guess by the glow of its eyes, remember its surrounded by a cloud as black as night. Come to think of it the cloud didn't make any noise either, but do clouds make noise? Thankfully it was at this moment that I saw what I had been looking for: the briar patch that I occasionally used to hide in as a kid. I now used it to stash supplies that I didn't want anyone else to know about. The one entrance I had created was hidden behind a small bush, but was large enough for Crash to fit through. We raced towards the briar patch, and Crash knowing what I had planned raced straight into the hole. The horror wasn't so lucky and slammed into the briar patch full force. I knew that wouldn't do it any lasting damage, but it did give me my first chance to hear its voice. It didn't scream in pain when it hit the briar patch, it didn't scream in anger from having lost me, its prey... It screamed in sorrow. The kind of sorrow of having lost something dear to it. This gave me chills. Was it crying in sadness that it had lost its chance to see my entrails? Was it crying because it had lost its chance to see my spleen? Was it crying because it had lost its chance to see Crash's spleen? Did Crash even have a spleen? Why am I thinking about this again? Oh yeah, the horror... Those were basically my thoughts back then... Well now Crash and I were safe, but the horror was still out there, stalking around the briar patch, and every now and then prodding at a section of it. I had a plan. First I got out the short sword I had stashed in the briar patch, then I got out my rope. I had fashioned a sort of passage up to the top of the briar patch, and I had covered the sharpest of the thorns with dried grass. Lots and lots and lots and lots of dried grass. Now I crawled through the passage, cutting myself on the thorns that made up the ceiling of the small passage. Gravity didn't like my idea of placing grass on the ceiling, so I could never get it to work to any great degree. I crawled all the way out of the briar patch, and now I was about thirty feet high... Just high enough to see the beast see me see it, and have it rear up, trying to get me. Fortunately its reach wasn't quite long enough to tear me off. Unfortunately it could reach up with what it called a paw, and was trying its best to tear me down with it. I quickly spun an improvised lasso over my head, all the while dodging the horror... barely, and managed to swing my lasso up into the tallest tree, catching hold of a branch. Then I tied it down to the briar patch as best I could, and began to shimmy up the rope. The horror had better ideas, and with a leap it tore the end of the rope tied to the briar patch out. I was still holding on to the rope, but as I frantically climbed up I felt the air from its paws brush me from underneath. Thankfully I made it up into the tree. Now all I had to do was jump from tree to tree, hoping the horror couldn't get me, and finally get to the river than ran to the west of me. I was hoping that river, which ran relatively close to Castle Town, would be able to get me away from the horror. Basically I was hoping it couldn't swim... I next had a few hours of jumping from tree to tree. By now it was reaching late afternoon. I had been away from the castle for a long time, was anyone worried about me?

Finally I reached the river, only to find that the nearest tree to the river was a good forty feet away from the edge of the river... I couldn't sit in that tree all night, so I had to think up a way to get by the horror, who was stalking around my current tree. Finally I came up with a desperate plan, and taking the short sword in hand I prepared myself to do something stupid, and insane. I cocked my arm back, and let fly my short sword at the horror's face. I was lucky, in that the pointy end actually impacted first, stabbing the horror on the right side of its face. By the time it reacted to the blow, letting out a truly fearsome silence, I had already landed from the tree, and was running for my life to the river. My luck wasn't as good as I hoped it would be, as this section of the river was not deep, and was easy to ford. I was halfway across the waist deep water when I heard a loud splash behind me, and then a continuous splashing indicating something big was trudging towards me in the water. Finally reaching the other side of the river I didn't need to look over my shoulder to know the beast was right behind me, and that I couldn't outrun it. I felt very doomed at that moment, and would have almost given up except for my innate sense of determination. When others give up, I just get angry. Well I was angry now, very much so. I wasn't desperate enough to turn and fight the thing, knowing I'd last all of one second, which was about as long as it would take me to start screaming. Instead of being foolish I ran on, hoping to find some way of getting away from the horror. Luckily for me I only had to go another ten steps to see salvation: an old abandoned cottage. It was high enough to allow me to get out of the horror's reach, and sturdy enough to hold out for some time. That was when the shadow loomed over my shoulders, and I remembered how quiet that blasted thing could be...


	3. Worthless Cottage is Worthless

~The Prelude, Chapter Three: Worthless Cottage is Worthless~

Your still reading this!? I guess I'm doing something right then... The hypno wheel in the background might be doing it...

There I was, resting on top of the abandoned cottage. I had just had an adrenaline rush that had made me go hyper, and thankfully survived as well... The horror had managed to sneak up on me, and had hit me with its paw, flinging me into the air, and twenty feet forwards. My small satchel that I had kept my meager lunch in had taken the full force of the punch, and I felt my kelbi milk bottle break. When I landed I found my adrenaline rush and got back on my feet, running to the cottage. I barely made it up before the horror got to me, and swiped at my back again. It missed and I was safe at last. It was then that I smelled something odd, and examining my satchel, I found it had rotted away to nothing, and the glass shards had spilled out. Now I knew why the horror had missed me as I climbed up onto the cottage's roof: the glass shards had gotten in its eyes. Not that the shards seemed to bother it much, it had just lost sight of me when they hit, or so I assumed... Now what? I couldn't run away, I was trapped now. The nearest tree was a long way away, at least five hundred feet. The horror would probably be able to get up on top of this cottage soon. The roof slanted down low enough that it could probably jump up if it really tried. I was halfway to the castle now, and I was in the middle of the farm community, but I was in an abandoned area. The soil hadn't been that good the past few years in this area, so the farmers were leaving it to replenish itself, they did this to every plot of land in a scheduled pattern. All I could do was wait, or do a suicide run and probably make it ten feet before I was overtaken.

Hours passed, and I dozed off for small increments during the night. Then, at around midnight, I had a brilliant, and insane idea: I was going to set the cottage on fire. I jumped down into the cottage by going through a small hole in the roof. I gathered up the tools for my insanity: dried wood pieces, an old can of cooking oil, and a few sticks. Then I got on the roof, in the direct center, and piled the wood pieces, then poured the old and congealed can of oil over them. Finally I poked a hole in one of the sticks with my carving knife, and then I put the other stick in the hole, and began to rub it like mad. I don't know what your thinking about, but I just want to make fire. I remembered I had forgotten to put dried grass in the hole, jumped into the cottage again, and found some on an exposed portion of the floorboards that had mother nature encroaching. Finally, again, I spun the stick with the dried grass at its base. After doing this long enough to make my wrists start to hurt, I still don't know what your thinking about, I finally got a spark. Then everything else started to catch fire, and thankfully I remembered in time I had forgotten to pour oil on the cottage itself, so I poured some sludge around the mini blaze as well. Than I stood back and watched as it caught fire. Now the tricky part, I had nowhere to go, so all I could do was hide in the cottage. The fire was like a beacon in the night, so I was hoping people would come to investigate. Now my mind started to wonder where this thing had come from, and what created it... The fire soon spread, and I was now trapped in a burning building. Great Quel, you wont die from being killed by that thing, but your going to burn yourself to death... Thankfully the smoke wasn't going into the cottage yet, and the fire was just on the roof at the moment... That was when I heard the voices... Multiple people were outside, and they weren't screaming in terror, so the horror must have left... I hoped. I quickly ran to the door, and pounded on it. It sounded like they heard me, and I quickly backed away as an ax pounded on the wall, making a hole. After a few minutes of hacking, the hole was finally big enough for me to get out, and a well muscled arm poked through the hole, hand reaching for me. I grabbed my savior lumberjack's arm, and was pulled to safety.

Outside the burning cottage I found two families, sons stood next to their fathers, and all were armed with makeshift weapons; pitchforks, rusty swords, and clubs. Apparently they knew this was arson...

"You started this fire?" asked my savior, he had a beard...

"Where's the monster?" said I

"Don't play games with us kid!"

"I'm not! I was chased by something from the Veil, so I set fire to the cottage to get someone's attention! Look's like it worked."

That was when some kindhearted farmer hit me over the head, and everything faded to black. I awoke to the feel of cold stone on my back, and the incessant sound of dripping all around me. No I wasn't in a dungeon, I was in a farmers cellar.

"Louts..." I grumbled.

"Well you might be in here because of me actually." said a voice.

Turning to look, I see a man in his late twenties, his hands and feet are bound, so he is stuck lying on his side. His five o'clock shadow is more of a one am shadow now, and his clothes are all torn up. He has a black eye, and a split lip to boot.

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"I've set multiple fires recently in those puffed up farmers barns, so they think your my accomplice."

"WHAT!?"

That was when a door at the top of the stairs opened, and a familiar face stepped into view.

"Quel!? What're you doing here?" said Gillian, Captain of Castle McCully's Second Squad.

"Being charged as an accomplice in a string of arson fires..."

"Your the one who set fire to the cottage?!"

"Yes, and I did it to get help! I was being chased by something in the Veil!"

"Something?"

"I didn't get a good look at it, but it was a type of monster I've never seen before."

Now my story wasn't entirely outrageous. New monsters were discovered every few years or so, with them inevitably eating someone, or attacking a town. Now the villages on the outer edges of the Guild's territory, they saw more unclassified monsters than they cared to report, which was a constant annoyance to the Guild Overseers, who liked to be informed about any threat.

"A new type of monster you say?"

"Yes, and I barely got away. I set fire to the cottage because I was trapped, and it was only a matter of time before it got me."

"Well... Your not one to cause disturbances lightly... Even if you do neglect your duties as a herder too much. Alright then, you'll just pay a fine for the destroyed cottage and we'll be off."

"Fine?"

"Oh don't worry you'll just have to pay off the debt you owe the owner of the cottage."

"K-kay."

Well at least I was alive... Alive and six feet under in debt... Just like everybody else.


	4. And so it Begins

~The Prelude, Chapter Four: And so it Begins...~

Four score and seven years ago... I don't actually remember 47 years in the past, as I wasn't born yet.

Time passed, and it wasn't until eight days after my encounter with the horror that I was able to go back to the Veil. I found the broken pen still broken, and the tracks of the poachers almost too old to follow, but being curious by nature, I was more than willing to follow them. The poacher's path led me deep into the forest, I crossed two small creeks on my journey, had to detour around fallen logs many times, and once lost the trail when it went into some undergrowth. Eventually I gave up on the chase, as it was going increasingly more northwards than I liked. This was territory outside of the Guild's power, and I wanted nothing to do with it. I gave up the chase. Returning home I found Crash still asleep in the shadow of my small hut. I had my herding duties to attend to, so I guess I should share with you just what a monster herder does... I still had half the day after my hike in the forest, so I saddled up Crash, and took off to investigate the grazing area of my Lord's aptonoth. I found them all sedately grazing on a hilltop overlooking Castle Town, and I preceded to check every grazing area, checking up on the shepherd's on duty. I had been doing this for a couple hours when I got a report that some rhenoplos had gotten loose across town, and were wreaking havoc in old Mrs. Parson's garden. She had a big garden, the biggest in town, so I knew it would be hard to capture them. When I arrived I found it was five rhenoplos that had escaped. Now rhenoplos are more stubborn than any creature you will come across, darn things will charge a diablos if they see it. There was a trick we herders knew to calm a rhenoplos; they responded to a herdsman's specially crafted herding stick. The herding stick is basically a piece of wood, with a propeller in a small cage on the tip. Now all of this wasn't special at all, but the propeller had small bells that had small akishi seeds in them. Akishi seeds were very rare, in fact only we herders knew how to find them. These seeds created a type of high pitched ringing that would affect any monster smaller than a bird wyvern, and lull it into a sleepy stupor. Now successfully made harmless all one needed to do was get behind the rhenoplos and herd it to a pen. Easy, right? Wrong. If you didn't get that stick down fast enough you would get run over by a rhenoplos before you could say wyverian.

I put down three herding sticks, and got behind a bush for a few seconds, then I got out and began to herd each rhenoplos until I had them all back up in the pen they had escaped from-it was right across the street from Mrs. Parson's garden. By now it was approaching dinner time, so I headed for home on Crash, dodging any low branches that he "didn't see". I ate a small supper with Crash making horrible noises in the background, and got out a good book to read. Yes I could read, most people who can afford to learn can read, and I had just finished my last year in school eight years ago. I read the book, and dozed off. Now this was how my life had been going for the past five years, and it was only interrupted every once in a while when there was a herd of aptonoth that got lost and they needed every herder they could find to track them down, or when a predator appeared, and they needed herders to calm and shelter the animals until the hunters had slain the monster. In short I was bored a lot of the time. I wanted to have this kind of life in my forties and fifties, not now when I had an urge to explore beyond every hill in sight. Destiny has a funny way of showing us our course in life, and I was contemplating my boredom one day when a friend of mine knocked on my door.

"Quel, are you there?!" said a voice outside my hut.

"Coming! Oh! It's you Aegrid, what can I do for you?" replied I.

Aegrid was an old friend of mine. He was the Mr. Derminster's second in command in the Castle McCully stables.

"Well ye see there's this urgent package that must be delivered to the Sorcerer's in Castoq, but the messenger's mount has broken a leg. So..." said Aegrid.

"They need Crash, because everyone around here knows he is the fastest, and hardiest mount for three leagues." I guessed.

"Aye."

"Don't have a choice, do I?"

"No..."

"Eh, as long as the messenger takes care of Crash, I'm fine with it."

"Grraahh." said Crash in dismay.

The rider showed up not too long after, ans with him came two knights from the castle. Two knights I knew from reputation as being bastards; not literally, but figuratively.

"This is the beast I shall be riding?" asked the messenger, in a voice filled with scorn.

"Yup." said I, deadpan.

"Well I suppose he'll do. There aren't any large monsters in this area after all."

My mind flashed back to the horror chasing me and Crash. I snapped out of it to watch as the two knights helped the messenger to mount, apparently it was urgent business. As soon as he sat in the saddle Crash got a queer look in his eyes that I knew all to well, and bucked like a mad bronco, sending the messenger flying on his third leap. The messenger landed in a rose bush off to the side of my hut. His curses were most eloquent as he rose out of that bush, covered in mini thorn wounds.

"I'll have its head!" he said.

"This is the only mount in the whole area for leagues who can possibly deliver the message in time!" replied one of the bastard knights. "You can't kill it!"

"But he can't even ride it." replied the other knight to his friend's side.

"Well if I can't then who can?" asked the messenger.

Every eye turned to look at me.

"Oh no! No, no, no! I'm not doing it, you can't make me! I've got other duties to attend to here at the castle!"

Ten minutes later I was sitting on Crash with a hastily packed meal, a suspicious package in my saddlebag, and a two day ride to Castoq.


	5. The Eventful Town of Wizards

~The Prelude, Chapter Five: ~

No comment actually...

Castoq wasn't what I expected after two days of hard riding, in which I had a lot of time to wonder what a city renowned for its sorcerers would look like. Instead of a city built entirely out of giant towers with sorcerers firing arcane spells out of the windows every few minutes, I saw before me a city old and filled with many normal people. No I actually didn't expect to find a city like I imagined, but still... There were only four towers in the city. Each was dedicated to one of the elements: fire, water, ice, and lightning. Even though dragon was still an elements it didn't have a tower dedicated to it, study of it was forbidden apparently. Anyway, back to the present, where I'm clueless, for at that time I didn't know any of what I just said...

I was riding down the main street when two things happened: I saw three guys riding dosfurogi's race towards me with cold expressions on their faces, and I heard someone shout "Look out!" I turned to look up just in time to take a flying girl full in the face. Her collision with me probably saved my life, though I have no certain way to tell even now... I landed on the ground, Crash began to cavort around me and the girl like a mad jester, and the girl was laughing at it all.

"Hey! Who are you, and why did you tackle me!" I shouted.

"I was falling you idiot!"

"You jumped!"

"Then gravity had me fall on you, idiot!"

By now I had realized that she had been carrying a saddlebag as well, and it had gotten tangled with mine. The three dosfurogi thugs arrived at that moment, cut away what I thought was my saddlebag, and rode of towards the center of the city.

"HEY! That's my saddlebag you a$$^&*# !" I shouted.

"Tough luck buddy." said the girl as she peeked in and saw that she was holding my saddlebag.

"HEY! That's my saddlebag you a$$^&*# !" she shouted.

"Instant karma." I said with a smile, right before she hit me in the face with my saddlebag.

When I got the saddlebag off my face she was gone, and so were the three fools who didn't look at what they were stealing. And after that nothing much happened until I got to the place I was seeking: the water tower of sorcery.

"Hello!? I have a delivery from Lord Jason McCully!"

I was shouting at a large reinforced door, and as the echoes of my shout died a plate at eye level slid open and I saw two luminous eyes appraising me. I held open the saddlebag, showing the eyes the contents of my saddlebag. They gazed at it for a few seconds, then the plate slid shut and the whole door began to revolve outwards. I stepped back and saw that the eyes belonged to a skinny, yet muscular man in his early thirties. He gestured for me to enter, and I took my first tentative steps into my first sorcerer's tower. It wouldn't be my last, nor my favorite.

I was guided by the skinny man down many corridors decked out with blue carpets, shinning marble walls, ceilings, and floors. Everything was decorated with water motifs, and lanterns with blue glass covers shaped like sea shells dotted the walls at even intervals. I was in a world of blue. After what seemed like a hundred corridors I found myself standing outside a door impossibly large. To say it reached the heavens wasn't that far from the truth, it disappeared at the rafters, and hugged the walls, which was astounding considering the corridors were a good twenty feet wide. My guide rapped lightly on it with his knuckles, and another small plate, this one seamlessly disguised with the door, slid open, revealing another pair of eyes. These stared out at us with a blind kind of boredom. After looking at us both the eyes blinked, and disappeared as the plate slid back into place. I expected the doors to start to ponderously open, creating shock waves in the floor, but another seamless opening appeared, this one was a smaller door, more people sized. I stepped through alone, my guide turned back the way we had come. When I stepped through I found myself in an entirely different world from where I had just come. Where that world had been shiny, blue, and pristine, this world was dark, suffocating, and grim. Tapestries as dark as night flowed along all the walls, and some even hung in the middle of the room, the ones in the middle seemed to be around something, but I'll be getting to that in a bit... There were no torches, small statues of children carried the only illumination: lanterns with dark purple coverings. The floor was black marble, or was that obsidian? It seemed to suck up all light, and now back to the tapestries in the middle of the room... They were hiding a giant chair, more of a throne, and on this throne sat an elderly woman. She was holding nothing in her hands, and yet I could have sworn she had something in them... A knife, a book, a doll, a globe of crystal, an eye? I couldn't tell, it was blurry... She was gazing at me with eyes that well, filled me with terror, and terror.

"You have what I desire?"

Suddenly she seemed to be both young and old, so I was a bit flustered. Just what was she...?

"Y-yes!" I stammered.

"Show meee..."

I quickly got out the package that I had been tasked to deliver, and held it up for her to see.

"Good, now place it on the ground in front of my curtain and leave."

I complied. Took one step back, and fell through a trap door down, down down, into complete darkness. And as I fell I heard the woman behind the curtain laughing, she was very amused.


End file.
